When science alone is not enough

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than half of the 90,000 newborn deaths and 46,000 stillbirths attributed to Group B Streptococcus (GBS) each year. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) causes at least 100,000 infant deaths per year globally with 97% of those occurring in low-and middle-income countries.? Yet, there has been a frustrating lack of solutions to protect newborns and infants against these infections, although attempts have tried and failed. When vaccines are needed most, in the most vulnerable first months of life, an infant's immune system is not yet mature, and vaccination would not provide protection in time.?

At the Gates Foundation, we’ve long believed in the lifesaving promise of maternal immunization. But over the past few decades, very little investment has been made in advancing maternal vaccine candidates. It’s expensive and risky, and those who would most benefit – people who have little to no access to health care – are among the poorest in the world. Thankfully, that’s beginning to change. There is some exciting science driving the advancement of maternal vaccines for GBS and RSV, but the science alone is not enough. Developing vaccines against diseases like GBS and RSV requires significant capital and a continued commitment to collaboration across sectors. We see this as an opportunity for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to make good on our mission to give every person the chance to live a healthy and productive life.?

Today, the foundation announced grants to Pfizer to support the advancement of maternal vaccine candidates for GBS and RSV – the latest investments in our goal to create a healthy pipeline of maternal vaccines against these two infections. The grants will fund work to help ensure that new lifesaving vaccines, if successfully developed and approved, are accessible to pregnant women in lower-income countries. This would represent a significant advancement in the maternal immunization space and could save the lives of millions of newborns and infants over time in lower-income countries. Both grants are anchored in the principle of the Gates Foundation’s Global Access Policy, which ensures that knowledge gained from these efforts can be promptly and broadly disseminated and any resulting products be made available and accessible at an affordable price to the world’s poorest.

People sometimes ask why we provide funds to pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer. The answer is that these companies have the unique research and development expertise to translate basic scientific research into real products, get those products tested and approved efficiently in dozens of countries, and manufacture them for delivery at scale. Yet, at the same time, their operating model sometimes mean that products that would primarily benefit people in lower-income countries would likely not get developed or be made widely accessible to people in lower-income countries where these infections are particularly devastating. In the context of these two realities, our grants to companies are targeted to support development and access to those products that would otherwise not reach the people who need them most.??

These grants are an important example of what can be achieved when we combine the foundation’s resources with the expertise and capacity of pharmaceutical companies; they hold the promise to end two leading causes of deaths of newborns and infants – which could translate the promise of science into tremendous impact.?